


Atlantic Rim

by Sholio



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, F/M, Families of Choice, Friendship, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:02:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24996568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Pacific Rim fusion. After the Greenland Shatterdome falls, Ianto Jones shows up at the Cardiff Shatterdome, bringing a secret.
Relationships: Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones, Lisa Hallett/Ianto Jones, Lisa Hallett/Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones
Comments: 11
Kudos: 62
Collections: Fandom 5K 2020





	Atlantic Rim

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Requiem](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Requiem/gifts).



When the alarms go off all over the Cardiff Shatterdome, Ianto is up on the Drivesuit level, serving coffee to the relief pilots.

The mood up to this point has been semi-relaxed but waiting, with a sort of simmering tension under the surface. Suzie is tinkering with yet another modification to her Drift partner Gwen's suit, while both of them toss playful insults back and forth with Rhys, Gwen's boyfriend and the head of the mechanic crew on Gauntlet Fury. Ianto goes through the motions of answering back, joining in the general teasing as he keeps them supplied with coffee and energy-intensive snacks. He's good at putting on a casual facade, no matter what's happening beneath the surface. Gwen smiles and thanks him as he hands her a selection of her favorite snacks. Suzie is more brusque in her appreciation, but he's learned to enjoy her sharp-edged style of humor.

He likes them, the pilots. They don't know -- at least, he thinks they don't know -- that he used to be one of them, many miles and a lifetime ago.

Except for Jack. Jack knows. But Jack is ...

Not here. 

Ianto's gaze drifts back to the big windows looking down over the floor of the vast bay, but there's no movement down there beyond the aimless milling of the ground crew, no sign that the Jaegers currently out in the field are coming back.

There's been a Kaiju attack along the French coastline, several hours ago. There are two Jaegers out on it. One is London Hurricane -- that's Owen and Tosh, with their small, light mech, fast in and fast out, constantly upgraded with Tosh's innovations.

And the other ...

The other is Blade Sonic, the legend. Jack Harkness's Jaeger. The one-man show.

Piloting a Jaeger alone isn't supposed to be possible. There is only one man who can do it.

Supposedly.

Ianto passes out coffee. Replies to Suzie's quip without hearing his own voice, or remembering what he said.

Gauntlet Fury, Gwen and Suzie's Jaeger, is standing by to provide backup if needed. But in a very real sense, when someone is out in the field, everyone at the Shatterdome is on standby. Other pilots drift in and out, along with the ground crew and the medics and other personnel from the support staff like Ianto.

"Don't sprain something," Martha Jones of the medical crew murmurs as she takes a biscuit from his tray.

"Sorry?" Ianto says, genuinely baffled. He doesn't know the head of the Cardiff Shatterdome medical team very well. He's actually taken pains _not_ to get to know her well. Or anyone here, beyond what he has to. Superficial. Surface. That's his life now.

Martha places a light hand on his arm. Startled, he tries to pull away, but he can't do it without dropping the tray. Her fingers curl around to touch his pulse.

"Heart rate elevated," she says quietly. "And you're sweating, Ianto. Are you ill?"

He smiles; it's all he can do. "I'm fine. It's the tension in the air, that's all. I'm sure you feel it too, ma'am."

"I'm sure it must bring back memories," she answers quietly, and he goes tense. Of course she's read his medical files. She thinks she knows all there is to know about him.

His hands have gone white-knuckled on the edge of the tray.

"If that's all, ma'am --" he begins, but then the alarms erupt -- flashing lights, sirens -- and the mood in the Drivesuit room abruptly swings a hundred and eighty degrees as the crew springs into action. Suzie drops her tools and spins around toward her suit, where Rhys is already leaping forward to help her suit up. Gwen is in hers, and the crew closes around her to help her finish sealing it and get her to the open cockpit of Gauntlet Fury.

Martha has forgotten all about Ianto, dashing off to speak to her medical team. Everyone has forgotten Ianto. He falls back to the edge of the room, absently finding a place to put down the unneeded tray.

He has no place here, in this room in the middle of a crisis. Not anymore.

But he can still feel the clammy grip of the Drivesuit wrapping around each limb. He remembers how the helmet closes over your head, shutting you into your own private world. Suddenly everything outside that helmet, outside the suit, becomes unimportant. Nothing is real except the neural connections coming online, the pull of mechanical actuators and clamps, and the strange-familiar feeling of the neural handshake as another's thoughts lock into your own.

_Ianto, Ianto, GET OUT --_

Lisa's voice rings in his ears, along with the taste of metal in his mouth, the cold wash of seawater closing over him as it floods the cockpit. He swallows hard, swallowing the bitter taste, and staggers to rest his back against the wall, needing the grounding of that small physical contact to hold him in the here and now. He's drenched in sweat; lucky for him Martha is too busy to notice, coordinating a small whirlwind of staff who have closed about her. Gwen and Suzie are nowhere to be seen; Gauntlet Fury's cockpit has swallowed them.

Forgotten and ignored, Ianto moves closer to the windows overlooking the floor of the Shatterdome as the great doors begin to open.

There is no way to know, yet, what's gone wrong. If Martha knows, if Gwen and Suzie know, no one is passing it along. He can see Martha with a hand on her ear-mounted radio, but no one tells the support staff anything. There aren't any announcements over the PA for the Shatterdome's personnel to clear the bay and head for the shelters. Yet.

A medical emergency? A Jaeger lost?

Ianto swallows, again and again, against an achingly dry throat.

The great doors of the Jaeger bay are open now. Outside, there's lashing rain and waves -- and movement. It's impossible to make out exactly what's happening, even from up here, but at least it's a better view than from down below. He is vaguely aware of the ground crew falling back, the grapples coming forward, the bay preparing to receive its returning mechas. Ianto strains his eyes against the darkness, the cascading rain, the flash of suit lights. Gauntlet Fury hasn't moved out, so that's got to be returning mechas, not Kaiju.

It's one mecha. No, it's two. One is barely moving under its own power. A Mark-3, blue and black and gray. The smaller Mark-5 is supporting it, half-dragging it.

Gauntlet Fury is still in place; it hasn't unlocked from the grapples, meaning there's no danger. Not to the Shatterdome, anyway. Ianto can't breathe; he can't tell if Blade Sonic is moving under its own power at all. The system of relays and grapples that move the Jaegers into place and return the cockpits to the Drivesuit level so the pilots can dismount have already locked on. Bringing them in, locking them into place, automatically opening the cockpits as soon as it's safe to do so.

_Jack ..._

Even balanced on a razor edge of tension, Ianto can't help being there in the cockpit with the pilots, in his head. You don't forget something like that. You _can't._ The trickle of sweat inside the suit, the way your body sags into the clamps as you let go of the weight of the Jaeger, let go of everything. The exhausted/triumphant floating feeling of Drifting at the end, with your partner's feelings echoed back.

Except ... he can't even begin to imagine what's happening inside Jack's cockpit. Jack slumped in the clamps, alone ... bleeding, dead --?

The cockpit door to London Hurricane opens first, and one of the pilots stumbles out. It's Owen, ripping off his helmet and pushing the ground crew aside before he stumbles and catches himself on the wall. "Oi, out of my way. Need to get over there ..."

Martha, at the epicenter of a medical crew closing around the Blade Sonic cockpit door, turns to snap at him, "Owen, get out of _our_ way and let the medical team look at you; you've been in the field for hours and you're hardly fit to walk, let alone help."

Ianto comes up quietly behind them. No one bothers to run him off; everyone is too busy. He's worked hard at this: the fine art of being useful, quiet, and above all invisible.

"I'm still a doctor," Owen snarls back at Martha. He does look awful, gray and wrecked, hair sodden with sweat; Ianto remembers all too well what that many hours in the cockpit will do to you. "His vitals are fucked to hell. He could be dying in there, and we couldn't _do_ anything, not out there; all we could do was get him back here --"

"So he's here now," she says, planting a hand on his chest, "and you're not the only doctor around; go find your partner, Owen, and sit down and get some electrolytes into you before I jab a sedative in your arm."

The cockpit door to Blade Sonic is finally, _finally_ cracking open, and Ianto finds that he's rigid, braced for ... he doesn't know, for seawater to gush out, for a glimpse of Jack's burned and dead body. He can't breathe.

But there's not much to see; he can only catch a glimpse of a suited body slumped in the restraints before Martha's medical staff closes in. Ianto glides in from behind, trying not to get in the way. Nearby, Owen and Tosh are being peeled out of their suits by the ground crew, while Gwen and Suzie disembark and begin the involved process of having their own suits stripped off.

In a distant kind of way, Ianto is glad they're all safe. He's glad every time they come back, because pilots often don't. But Jack is the one he has eyes for now.

Jack, who is flat on his back, while the suit mechanics tearing off pieces to get him out of it, and Martha and her medics crowd them. Ianto moves in, calm and quiet, edging through in with tight self-control, not pushing. His fingernails lance his palms in tightly closed fists.

The helmet comes off, and he can see Jack's face, the smear of blood down the pale skin beside Jack's nose and mouth. His eyes are closed. He looks dead.

Then Jack abruptly jerks and gasps, his body bucks, and half the medics jump back. Martha doesn't; she's crouched beside Jack, working to get the breastplate of the suit off so she has access to his chest.

"Good God, Harkness, you gave us a scare," she says, curling an arm around his back and helping him sit up. "Wasn't for the suit readouts, we'd have thought we lost you."

"I'm hard to kill," Jack gasps out, clutching at her arm. 

He's white as a sheet under the harsh lights. Ianto wants to be there, yearns for it with everything in him -- but instead he steps back; he has no place here, surrounded by pilots and the others who have jobs to do. But he can breathe again; the bitter taste coating the back of his tongue is less.

"Oi! Harkness!" Owen yells across the noise on the Drivesuit deck. He scrambles to his feet, steadying himself on Tosh's shoulder; he's out of his suit now, just wearing a sweat-damp undersuit with a can of rehydration formula clutched in his hand. "You're an utter wanker, you know that? Stop giving us heart attacks, mate!"

"Thanks, Owen, love you too but tell Toshiko I love her more!" Jack calls back breathlessly. 

There was a time, far away from here, when Ianto was a part of the pilot camaraderie, surrounded by the casual insults and affection. But here, in the Cardiff Shatterdome, he's not -- and he pulls away, turns away, before Jack can see him. He retreats to the stairwell down to the lower levels, and there he sits for a while, leaning against the wall, just breathing through the shakes.

***

He goes to Jack's quarters later, much later, when the medics have had plenty of time to do their thing. It's late. He's not sure if Jack is even there. He knocks, the quick light rapping that he knows Jack will recognize.

And Jack says quietly, "Come in."

The interior of Jack's quarters is dark, lit only by the faint glow of some kind of tech illuminating Jack's tangled trousers on the floor, a comm or PDA. From the bed, Jack says softly, "Missed you earlier."

For some reason, that gentle question catches behind his breastbone like a fishhook. _I was there,_ he could have said. But he wasn't, at the end. Instead, he says quietly, "I ... watched, for your Jaeger to come back in." Striving for something like a casual tone, he adds, "I expect Martha had it in hand."

"Oh, didn't she just. Like a dynamo, that woman." Jack rolls over and holds out an arm, and Ianto goes to him. Jack is naked under the covers, because of course he is, and warm as a furnace, because he's Jack.

There is love made in the dark, bodies moving together. It's comfort and pleasure and temporary escape. There's no sign that Jack nearly died today, but also, it's dark; Ianto can't see whatever is on his face. It's often like this, with them.

He means to leave, after. But Jack's arm is thrown over him, and it's comfortable here, and warm.

He sleeps.

And dreams.

"Ianto," Lisa says. "Hello, love."

She's in the cockpit of their Jaeger, but she's not in a Drivesuit and helmet, locked into grapples. She's just crosslegged in a sort of pilot's chair that looks like nothing that ever graced the cockpit of a Jaeger, a piece of comfortable furniture almost like a sort of couch, and she's wearing perfectly normal clothes, jeans and a flowing white peasant blouse.

But there is still machinery. It runs in and out of her, wires and tubes, even though she moves freely and smiles as if it doesn't bother her at all.

Every time he's dreamed of her, it's more solid ... and more strange. At first it was just whispers, glimpses. Sometimes he could almost see her at the corner of his eye, even when he was awake. He felt like he was going mad. He still does.

But ... it's Lisa. She's worth going mad for.

"Hi," he whispers. He's afraid to get closer to her, afraid to break the spell -- afraid, also, to look down and see what he's wearing here, what he looks like.

"Is that Jack?" she says. "I haven't seen him before, not properly; I've only caught glimpses. He's beautiful."

She's grinning, wide and happy. He feels terribly guilty, although he knows he shouldn't, and the smile falls away from her lovely face as she senses his unhappiness and the reason for it.

"You're not doing anything wrong. We had an arrangement, didn't we? And we both meant it."

He can only nod. Their relationship had never been entirely exclusive anyway, and when they started going out in the Jaeger, with the ever-present awareness that one or both of them might not come back, they had both made a promise ....

With the suddenness of the Drift, he falls abruptly into the memory. Lisa, in his arms. Promising each other that if anything happened to one of them, the other could go on. _Should_ go on.

_Go back out there into the black, my darling. Find someone else to Drift with, someone else to love. My love is your support, not your anchor._

There are no lies in the Drift.

"Anyway," Lisa says quietly, "he really is beautiful, Ianto. I hope I can meet him someday." She leans forward, her gaze growing intent. "Find me. Please. I'm out here. I'm still _me,_ Ianto."

"I know," he breathes. "I'm trying. I just have to get out in a Jaeger. I will find a way. I promise."

He reaches for her. He can't help it. And as always, that's the thing that breaks the connection. He wakes, with a jolt, in bed next to Jack. His entire body thrums and his head throbs with the humming ache of a broken neural handshake -- or maybe it's just the lingering effects of night after night of insomnia. He raises his head to look at the clock. He's had maybe an hour's sleep. 

"Are you all right?" Jack asks quietly, in the dark.

Jack never seems to sleep. He sleeps even less than Ianto does. Ianto is unsure, in some late-night moments of doubt, if Jack sleeps at all.

"I'm fine." He sits up and reaches for his trousers. "I need to get back to my own quarters."

"You can stay," Jack says quietly.

"No." Not with the memory of Lisa filling his head. "I can't."

***

Far down below the Cardiff Shatterdome, in the old tunnels underlying the new facility, Ianto works out until he's tired enough to maybe, just maybe, find sleep again this night.

He can't use the pilot gym; he doesn't have privileges. He could use the general Shatterdome personnel gym, but he doesn't want to. It's always busy. There is anonymity in crowds, sometimes, but he still feels too exposed. He prefers the quiet of the tunnels.

He has a feeling that, by now, he knows these tunnels better than almost anyone at the Cardiff facility. There's no reason why anyone else couldn't come down here, and sometimes he does catch other people sneaking down for a smoke or a furtive shag. But, for the most part, no one else is that interested in the things that have always interested Ianto: the way he likes to catalogue things and map them out.

Like he's learned the tunnels, on long sleepless nights. And he's built himself a little gym down here, behind the door to an empty storeroom that (through a bit of judicious lock-reworking) only he has the key to. He has mats here, and weights, and a variety of wooden staffs -- everything he's brought down, one item at a time, from the levels above.

He doesn't have to devise his own workout routine because he already has one, the pilot's workout that he used to go through with Lisa. He just doesn't have a partner for the paired, sparring segments. But there's no way of filling that ache, so he works around it, the way he does in all the rest of his waking life.

So he works, and works, until his muscles burn and his hair falls sweat-drenched across his forehead. Until he can lose himself in a few hours of hopefully nightmare-free sleep, and maybe find her again, if only for a little while.

***

"Ianto, hi! Can we sit here?"

The voice is female, and friendly. Tosh.

After the amount of sleep he's had -- or hasn't had -- the canteen is too big and too bright. Ianto only meant to shove in a few forkfuls of instant eggs, but he's still sitting here, half asleep, when the pilots descend on him for some reason.

"Ianto, mate," Owen says, dropping beside him and slapping his tray down beside Ianto's. "We want to ask you a few questions about Jack."

Gwen smacks his arm. "Owen, you are such an absolute _wanker_ sometimes. We want to have breakfast with you --"

 _"And_ ask you a few questions about Jack," Owen says, but there's a certain abashed quality to him now.

Ianto looks up warily at the cluster of pilots who have closed around him: Owen and Gwen on his side of the table, Tosh and Suzie on the other side. For a moment it's so painfully familiar that his throat closes up. This was how it was with Lisa and the other pilots at the Greenland Shatterdome, meals eaten in cheerful, friendly camaraderie.

But not here. He tends to eat at irregular hours, and the pilots are usually sitting together anyway; he wouldn't presume to eat with them. Sometimes, if he's here with just one of them, he'll end up sitting with them -- Tosh or Gwen, usually -- and Jack has invited him over to the pilot's table a couple of times. In retrospect that was probably a mistake. Because now they've sought _him_ out, and he's not sure how to handle it. The friendly, too-familiar banter as they open bottles of milk and swap items from their trays ("Ugh, Chelsea buns. Want mine, Tosh?" "Oh, thanks Suzie!") -- it's all just ... too much.

"I was going to get more coffee ..." he says, starting to rise, with a general idea of escaping.

"I'll fetch it," Tosh says, getting up too. "I need to go back through the line anyway. I can't believe they didn't give me a fork. Does anyone else need anything while I'm up? Sugar in that, Ianto? Milk?"

"Ah, black," he says faintly, sinking back down.

"Oh, get me marmalade, please, if they have any left!" Gwen calls after her.

"But about Jack, though," Owen says, buttering a muffin.

"Owen, I will hurl this scone straight through your skull if you don't let the man finish his eggs," Suzie says. Just when he thinks he has an ally, she adds, "And _then_ he can answer our questions." 

"I don't know why any of you think I know anything about Jack," Ianto says defensively.

"Come on mate, we know you're shagging him," Owen says.

There is a precisely coordinated chorus of "Owen!" from Gwen and Suzie. Drift partners. He has to half close his eyes for a moment, trying not to fall back into the memory of what that was like -- the way he and Lisa would finish each other's sentences, anticipate each other's thoughts.

Tosh comes back and hands Gwen her marmalade, and Ianto a hot coffee. "It's a turnabout, isn't it?" she says, smiling at him. "Us getting coffee for you."

He looks down at it, not sure what to say. "I'd hardly think you'd have noticed." Okay, probably not that.

"Of course we notice," Gwen says. "You're always up there, and you remember everything we like. No else is half so attentive to us." She touches his shoulder. "We like you, Ianto."

"Gwen love, you're going to scare him off before we have a chance to ask him anything at all. Here." Owen unexpectedly deposits half a buttered muffin on the edge of Ianto's tray. "You really need to eat more. For someone who spends half your time feeding us, you hardly eat enough to keep yourself alive. And I'm saying this as a doctor. Now. I have questions about Jack, of a medical nature."

Ianto retrieves the muffin hesitantly, and takes a bite. Having his mouth full is a perfectly good excuse for not answering.

"There's something going on out there that's not right," Owen continues. "His vitals in the cockpit never flatline. But they're _weird."_

"Precise medical terminology, is it?" Suzie asks brightly.

"Sod off, Costello. Look, there's no way he can do what he does. I've read the literature. There are rare cases of pilots handling a Jaeger on their own, without a Drift partner, for short periods of time in an emergency. But he does it _every_ time. And it's a sodding Mark-3. Maybe you could do it in a Mark-5, not that I'm signing up to try it anytime soon, but those things are bloody dangerous even spreading the load about. But he keeps going out, and he keeps coming back, and I _saw_ his readouts yesterday afternoon, all right? I had Martha show me the file --"

"When you were supposed to be resting," Tosh says.

"I can't rest when there's a fucking medical impossibility happening in front of me. A medical impossibility named Jack Harkness."

"What makes you think I know anything about that?" Ianto asks, a little bit desperately. He has his theories about Jack Harkness, and his suspicions, but he doesn't _know_ anything. And all right, maybe he started getting close to Jack in the first place because he wanted to know more about the Cardiff Shatterdome's famous solo pilot, but it's ... a lot more than that, now.

"Because you're shaggin' him," Owen says, and stuffs half a muffin in his mouth.

Suzie makes good on her promise to throw a scone at him. Owen snatches it out of the air and waggles it at her with the clear intention of keeping it.

"How does that follow?" Gwen asks. "I'm shagging Rhys, but that doesn't mean I know every medical thing there is to know about him."

"No, but you'd know if he was coming back from the bloody dead," Owen says through a mouthful of muffin crumbs.

This prompts what is clearly the latest iteration of an ongoing arguments. "Owen --" Gwen begins, exasperated, as Tosh says, "But his readings _are_ strange, though."

"Why do you even have his suit readouts piped to your cockpit?" Suzie says. _"That's_ what's weird."

"Because I'm a bloody doctor and it makes sense to keep an eye on you people when I'm out with you in the field. I do it with you girls too, you know."

"There is an entire medical division monitoring us when we're deployed," Gwen says. "If anything was going on with Jack, they'd know."

"They _do_ know, they just don't know what," Owen says. "Look, I don't know _how_ , but I think there's something not quite right in the outputs from his suit. His readings yesterday, for example. It's almost like it's on a loop."

"Do you even realize what a conspiracy theory this is," Suzie says impatiently. "What, do you think the entire ground crew is in on it?"

"No, I think there's something bloody weird with the outputs though! Well?" Owen says, elbowing Ianto in the side, and Ianto only belatedly realizes that, surrounded by the Cardiff pilots' chatter, he's managed to finish everything on his tray for the first time since ... he can't actually remember when. Including the coffee Tosh brought him and Owen's donated half muffin.

"I don't know," Ianto says. "I really don't. Why don't you just ask him?"

Owen scoffs and Tosh says, "Well, it's not as if he'd give us a proper answer."

"I took a look at his suit," Suzie says. "There's nothing wrong with it that I can find."

"I thought you were on Team Owen is a Bloody Conspiracy Theorist."

"Well, you _are_ , but that doesn't mean I'm not curious."

"Shhh," Gwen hisses. "He just walked in."

A table's worth of guilty faces, including Ianto's, turn toward the door to the canteen. Jack has, indeed, just walked in, and Ianto feels as if an entire lifetime's worth of lies and disloyalty are written across his face, along with a faint blush because he can't help thinking about just what, exactly, he and Jack were getting up to last night.

Jack looks perfectly normal today, with his long coat sweeping out behind him, smooth-shaven, his hair combed and gelled. It's one thing to touch him in the dark, but another thing to _see_ him, looking perfectly put together and fine. He's laughing with the canteen staff and looks bright and energetic and not at all like someone who was dragged bleeding and half-dead out of a Jaeger cockpit yesterday.

Or all the way dead, if Owen is right.

And ... it's _not_ quite right, is it? Both Owen and Tosh still look a little bit dragged out today, gray and tired. Ianto remembers that too, the morning-after hangover feeling. But Jack never looks like that. He looks glossy and put together, and his smile is perfect, and ...

And Ianto recognizes that. Because he does the same thing. You put on the armor first, the suit and the neatly combed hair and the smile. And no one looks beyond that to see what's underneath.

Ianto isn't sure if Jack is hiding what Owen and the rest think he's hiding. But he's definitely hiding _something_.

Jack looks across the canteen, gaze scanning over the tables until it lands on the table with the pilots, and Ianto. A smile breaks across his face, a quick flash of teeth, and his eyes pick out Ianto's with pinpoint accuracy.

Ianto scrambles to his feet, reaching for his tray.

"Work," he says, "work, must get to it -- sorry --"

And he really _is_ sorry, he realizes as he turns away. Sorry to walk away from the easy friendship the pilots are offering, even though they know nothing about him, only that he's the person who brings them biscuits and coffee. Sorry to turn his back on Jack and the warm invitation in Jack's smile.

He's just ashamed and sorry, and he has nothing to offer any of these people. He doesn't know why they bother reaching out to him when he has so little to give.

***

Below the Shatterdome. Working out. Training himself, trying to perfect himself, as if that's possible.

When he first came here, he had aimed everything at getting in as a pilot. It was all that mattered. Getting back out there. Finding Lisa, or whatever was left of her to find.

And then slowly, over the weeks, it has begun to dawn on him that in order for there to be an opening for him as a pilot, one of them is going to have to die.

He lashes out, striking with the staff at the practice dummy he made in lieu of the partners he no longer has to spar with.

Who, then? Sweet, gentle Tosh? Suzie, bright and clever and defensive in ways Ianto knows only too well? Gwen, affectionate and warm-hearted, drawing him into their circle? Owen, prickly and sarcastic, slipping his own food onto Ianto's tray because he notices and remembers that Ianto doesn't eat enough?

Jack?

He swings the staff with extra force, driving a spray of sand and foam from the dummy's padding.

"What did that thing do to you, shag your wife?"

Jack's voice, quiet from behind him. Ianto spins, staff in hand, and finds Jack standing in the doorway of his converted storeroom gym, standing there quietly, just watching him.

Ianto lowers the staff and breathes out slowly. For a moment they watch each other. Jack is casually dressed, wearing a loose T-shirt with trousers and boots. It's chilly down here, but he doesn't act cold, though Ianto can see gooseflesh prickling his arms. Stubborn bastard.

"You followed me," Ianto says at last.

"I wondered where you go," Jack says. He picks up one of the unused staves. "You look like you need a partner," he says quietly.

Ianto's partner was Lisa. And that's what does it, makes something in him snap -- because Jack _knows_ that, he has to; if Martha's read Ianto's file, there's no way Jack hasn't.

Ianto swings the staff. Jack brings up his own to block. Wood clatters on wood, sliding down to clip Ianto's knuckles. It's a bright sharp pain, sparking him into full wakefulness -- as if he's been sleepwalking up until now.

He's really, _really_ missed having someone to do this with.

They whirl around, staves snapping and clattering. The sharp sparring sounds bounce off the close walls.

"I read about you," Jack says. He's hardly out of breath. "You and your partner, Lisa Hallett."

"I knew you'd been looking me up," Ianto says between his teeth.

"You were stationed at the Greenland Shatterdome, before it fell."

"So what if I was?"

"Sixteen survivors," Jack says. He's still barely out of breath, though it's all Ianto can do to keep up with him. God, he's _missed_ this, missed it so much. He is stretching himself to his limits, and he's holding his own, but only just. Lisa was like that, too. He had to delve into his own untapped depths of strength and speed in order to keep up with her, and he _loved_ that.

"So what?" Ianto gets out between clenched teeth. 

"Of all the survivors, you were the only pilot." Now Jack's breath is starting to catch, and Ianto finds himself grinning, fierce and wordless. He's been pushing and pushing himself, even if he can't go out in a Jaeger anymore, and somehow it's deeply vindicating to find that he can give a workout to the golden boy of the Cardiff Shatterdome.

"So _what?"_ he forces out. It's hard to get the breath for it. "You know, your own fellow pilots think you can't die."

Jack's breath leaves him in a sharp huff, and that's enough of an opening for Ianto to get the upper hand, pushing him back against the wall. He pins Jack with the staff at his throat.

"What do you think?" Jack says, breathless, looking at Ianto over the staff with that clear blue gaze.

"I don't know! Nothing about you makes sense." Ianto steps back, breathing hard, dropping the staff to his side. Jack does likewise, the staff falling to point at the floor. "You go out there alone. It's ..." He catches a sharp breath. "Supposed to be impossible."

"Supposed to be?"

Ianto looks away, dropping his gaze to the floor. "You're not the only person I ever met who could do it."

There's a quick rush with the staff, but Jack telegraphs his moves enough that Ianto can get his own block into place just in time to be slammed into the wall, with Jack's warm, strong body holding him there. "Who?" Jack asks quietly.

Ianto meets his gaze. He's tired of running, tired of hiding, tired of holding it all inside. "Lisa."

"Did she?"

Ianto tries to speak, but it's too much. His head is full of ... everything, the explosions and the tidal wave tearing through the Greenland Shatterdome, the screams and the blood and the awful feeling of Lisa's mind torn away from his, the gaping wound where she'd been -- and somewhere on the edge of his thoughts, the worst thing of all is that he can almost hear Lisa saying his name, over and over again, trying to calm him --

"Whoa. Easy. Breathe."

He comes back to himself, gasping, on his knees with Jack holding his shoulders. His face is wet, lashes matted with tears. He tries to push away, shivering, and after a moment Jack lets him. Ianto pulls away until he can get his back against the wall.

Jack reaches over to retrieve the water bottle that Ianto brought down with him, and wordlessly holds it out.

Reaching out to take it feels like a concession of some kind. Ianto hesitates, then he does -- Jack's fingers brush over his -- and takes a small sip. He's not quite ready to trust his stomach with more than that. He wipes the back of his hand across his face; god, he hates crying.

"I believe she's still out there," he says to the wall, not to Jack.

"You think she survived the fall of the Greenland Shatterdome? What makes you think so?"

"Because ..."

 _Because I'm Drifting with her in my sleep._ But that's impossible. You can't Drift without the equipment -- finishing each other's sentences is one thing, but not like this, not with sight and sound and senses.

Impossible. As impossible as a man -- or a woman -- piloting a Jaeger alone, and coming back, over and over.

Ianto tries to explain in a way he can justify to himself. "Lisa was always ... she was more in tune with our Jaeger than anyone I've ever known. More than I knew was possible, until I met you."

"So what do you think she's doing? Living under the ice? Repairing it herself?"

Ianto flings out an arm in wordless frustration. He _knows_ it's not possible. And yet ...

"No one ever found our Jaeger, Jack. How likely is that? The ocean's deep, but those things are huge. They don't just _vanish._ "

"It could have fallen into one of the Rifts," Jack says softly. "Gone wherever the kaiju come from."

"I've thought of that," Ianto says tightly. He looks away.

"So how'd you survive, if she and the Jaeger were both lost?"

"You read my file." He doesn't _like_ it, Jack knowing so much more about him than he knows about Jack.

"I know what the file says." Jack shifts position, and his fingers brush Ianto's leg. Ianto, against his will, looks away from the wall, at Jack's face. "What's in there, from your account of that day ... you told everyone that you don't remember. Is that true?"

"Why do you want to know?" Ianto asks sharply. He struggles to his feet, stumbles and catches the wall. His muscles are feeling the workout from earlier, combined with lack of sleep and not enough food. Jack rises in a single fluid motion and moves to steady him, but Ianto steps back. "What is it to you, anyway?" Pent-up words catch behind his teeth: _What am I to you_ and _You want all the answers from me but give none back._

"Well, you're beating yourself to shit down here every night," Jack says bluntly, "so obviously it means a lot to you."

"It doesn't matter," Ianto snaps back, "because I'll never get a chance to go out and _look_ , so I'll never find her, will I?"

And having bared far more than he wanted to, he steadies himself on the wall, and leaves.

***

Turnabout is fair play. He goes looking for Jack's past in the Shatterdome archives. And he finds it, but not the way he expects.

Ianto is good at being quiet and unobtrusive and helpful. So good, in fact, that he can be found helping out wherever he can make himself useful. He helps in the kitchens. He helps in the archives. Because he's good at organizing things, and good at finding things, he ends up in the deep archives, down in the tunnels under the Shatterdome where no one has been in decades. Down here are the _old_ files, the files for the Torchwood Institute, what this place used to be before the Rifts opened and poured kaiju into the world.

He's looking for information on the start of the Jaeger program. Maybe the earliest pilots and the first developers of the Drift tech tried things that were later deemed inadvisable or even impossible. Maybe, down here, he can find the answers to the mysteries surrounding both Lisa and Jack.

Instead, he finds Jack, in a completely unexpected place: a box of old photographs, yellowed around the edges, a century old at least.

He stares for a long while at the photograph of the man in period dress who can't possibly be Jack Harkness, a man who must have died before Jack Harkness was even born.

And the more he digs, shocked and baffled, the more of Jack he finds. It's the kind of things that probably an ordinary researcher would never have noticed, these little traces of Jack. But Ianto finds them, notices them, because he knows Jack so well. He finds Jack's handwriting scribbled on yellowed labels, Jack's particular shorthand in a set of typed reports about early activity around the Rifts.

Ianto sits on floor and reads them. And digs some more. And reads more.

And then he goes looking for someone to talk to about it. _Not_ Jack. This time, he needs someone who knows far more than he does about how the Jaegers work.

***

Ianto spends a lot of time around the Drivesuit room and the pilots' lounge, keeping them well supplied with coffee and biscuits. But he almost never goes to the repair bays, the mechanics' territory.

Part of the reason is because he simply has little reason to go here. There is a different shift of cafeteria staff who keep the mechanics' refreshments stocked. But it's also because Lisa used to spend a lot of time down here, in their own version of this place, at the Greenland Shatterdome.

The pilots' lounge is filled with memories, but at least they're somewhat dulled by time and distance, buried under more recent memories of circulating quietly around with his tray and restocking the coffee urns. Here, though -- he's unprepared for the emotional gut-kick of the smells of grease and welding arcs. He stumbles and hits the wall, nearly dropping the tray of donuts he's brought with him as a sort of peace offering. 

_Ianto,_ Lisa's voice whispers into the back of his head.

"Not here," he whispers back, a plea and a prayer. The sense of her presence -- maybe reality, maybe insanity -- recedes, and he gets himself together and goes over to a team of mechanics working on London Hurricane.

And, for once, he's actually in a little bit of luck. Tosh is down here. She's far more approachable than Suzie, the other mechanically-inclined of the Cardiff pilots. He wouldn't have minded talking to Rhys, but Tosh is better.

"Oh, thank you, Ianto," Tosh says, smiling at him as she selects a pink-iced donut with sprinkles off his tray. "I don't see you down here much. Oh, which one is your favorite flavor?"

"Er, of the donuts?" It's not really a question he has an answer for. "I'm not much of a donut person," he says, and suddenly it's as if Lisa is whispering in his ear: they had almost this exact conversation in the Greenland Shatterdome canteen, years ago. _Eat the chocolate one,_ she whispers in his memory, _live a little, Ianto_ ... At least, he thinks it's just memory. "Er. Chocolate?"

Tosh nabs another napkin and a second donut. "For you," she says, "when you're done handing these out."

"What is it with everyone trying to feed me?"

"You feed us, it's only fair."

"It's my job," he protests, but it does at least give him an excuse to come back and talk to her when his tray is empty. By the time he gets back, he thinks for a minute that she's gone, but then spots her over by the coffee machine. She smiles and beckons, and offers him the donut, wrapped in its napkin, and a paper cup of coffee. Ugh, coffee-machine coffee ... but he takes it to be polite.

"So what brings you down to the grease monkeys' domain?" Tosh asks. "I'm down here all the time, but you almost never are."

"I actually had some questions. Maybe you can answer them?" He takes a bite of the donut, and that sweeps him straight back to that day in the Greenland canteen. Laughing and joking with Lisa, her wicked grin, her sticky fingers pushing a donut into his hand. _Just because chocolate is YOUR favorite, Lisa, doesn't mean that I ..._

"Are you all right?" Tosh asks. She's peering at him with worry.

He's getting tired of people asking him that. "Fine," he manages, swallowing a too-large bite, and washes down the donut with a swig of -- ugh -- extremely terrible coffee. "So, ah, I was curious about the origins of the Jaeger program. I've been digging around in the old Torchwood archives -- that's the project that originally used this facility?" Tosh nods. "And it sounds like they had something to do with the early development of the project. Do you know anything about that?"

"Some," Tosh says. She takes a little sip of her coffee, and licks donut sprinkles off her fingertips.

"Did they use alien technology in the development of the Jaegers?"

Tosh goes very still. Then she steps forward, and says quietly, "What did you find?"

"Nothing concrete," he says softly. "Just ... suggestions. Hints. I thought Torchwood was some kind of government think tank, I think everyone does, and no one thinks of it much anymore since it's been decades since it was shut down. But it was a lot more than that, wasn't it?"

Tosh looks around and then pulls him off to the side, behind the coffee machine. 

"Nobody really knows much of anything for sure. Just rumors," she says quietly. "So far, I haven't met anyone who was here in the beginning. And that's kind of weird, isn't it? It's only been a couple of decades. But of course the mortality rate is -- um. Well. What it is." It isn't only pilots who have suffered massive attrition. Too many Shatterdomes have been lost, too many engineers killed in accidents as they pushed the development of new generations of power armor.

"But there are rumors," Ianto presses.

Tosh nods. "The program just went too fast, too far, in the early days. We shouldn't have had the technology to do what we did. Not at that speed. But of course, if we hadn't, we'd have been completely overrun." She takes a breath. "What I've heard is that the Rifts were around for decades before the kaiju came through. And other things came through. Lots of things."

She looks around and moves even closer to him. Ianto bends forward automatically. Tosh is almost whispering now.

"I've been down there too, Ianto," she murmurs. Her voice is filled with wonder. "There are things I've found. _Incredible_ things. There's _so_ much more out there than just the kaiju --"

She is interrupted by a siren. The lights in the mechanic bay turn red. There is an abrupt flurry of activity around them, and a voice over the PA.

_Duty pilots, suit up. Relief pilots, on standby._

"Oh, _sodding hell,_ " Tosh mutters. It's a very Owen sort of curse; she doesn't appear to notice, as she takes a quick step back. "Duty pilots are, well, us. I wonder where Owen is? Sorry, Ianto, this'll have to wait for later. I need to find my partner."

"Of course," Ianto says, and steps back, all but forgotten as she rushes off. The whirl of activity of a Rift alert surrounds him, but is not, of course, _for_ him.

It hurts, a pain he's almost grown used to, but never quite inured to. The way he's grown used to Lisa's absence, but will never get past the pain of it.

***

At least with Owen and Tosh's Jaeger deployed, Ianto doesn't have too much trouble finding Jack. He knows that Jack will be found where the other relief pilots are: on the Drivesuit level, ready to head out in case they're needed. 

He brings up a tray on pure reflex, smiles at Gwen and Suzie, passes the tray off to someone else, and finally goes over to Jack. It's the first time they've spoken since that sparring session down in the tunnels below the Shatterdome. The first time since Ianto learned what he's learned.

"I need to see you alone," Ianto murmurs.

"Is this really the time for a booty call?" Jack whispers back, grinning, the flirty mask firmly in place.

"Please," Ianto whispers, and that's what does it. Jack nods to the mechs, and retreats with Ianto into the stairwell down to the lower levels.

Once they're past the busy swirl surrounding the Drivesuit level, Jack says softly, "You've been avoiding me."

"You haven't exactly been looking for me either."

Jack smiles a little. "True. What did you want to talk about?"

Ianto hesitates. There's just so _much._ So many unanswered questions, any of which could be the one that unlocks the answers he needs -- or the tripwire that sets Jack off like a bomb, and locks all the answers away forever.

Eventually he takes a photo out of his pocket, dogeared and yellowed, showing a man who looks very much like Jack next to a woman, both of them in the dress of a long-ago decade. "This."

Jack takes it quietly, and looks at it for a long moment. "I wondered where that got off to," he says, very quietly.

"Tell me it's your great-great-grandfather."

Jack looks from the photo to him, and there is a shyness, almost, in his trace of a smile. "Do you want me to?"

"No!" Ianto bursts out. "I want the truth, Jack!" He looks around, but they're alone in this corridor, with nothing but the distant echoes of closing doors and booted footsteps booming faintly through the interconnected halls of the Shatterdome. Ianto takes a step closer, closing into Jack's space, and Jack doesn't step back. "I want to know what _you_ know about the Jaeger project. About all of this."

"That's a broad field, Ianto --" 

"Lisa's life is at stake!"

"Ianto," Jack says between his teeth. "I wish I could tell you something different, but she's not out there. Trust me on this one."

Of all the things he had expected, that wasn't one of them: that casual dismissal, that cruel slapping down of his hopes. Ianto stares at him. And Jack's face softens; crumples, almost.

"I wish I could give you hope, but it would be false hope," Jack says quietly. "Ianto, it's not possible. Whatever you think Lisa is doing -- she isn't. She can't be."

 _"You_ do!" Ianto snaps.

Jack wets his lips, and looks away, and something dark and crawling stirs in Ianto's chest.

"Jack?"

Jack grimaces. He doesn't reply.

"You go out in your Jaeger, alone, and you come back," Ianto says, low and fierce. "What makes you so special? What makes you think Lisa couldn't?"

"I don't," Jack says, low.

"What are you talking about? Of course you do." Ianto bursts out with a single, short, humorless laugh. He hadn't expected this, either: outright lies. "What happens to you, then, when you're out there?"

"You want to know what happens out there?" Jack swings around, all up in his face. "I _die,_ Ianto. I die."

Ianto can't speak. It's not as if he wasn't expecting some kind of answer along those lines; he was prepared for it, somewhat, by Owen's questions. But he wasn't prepared for the raw pain in Jack's eyes.

"And that's why your girlfriend can't still be alive," Jack goes on viciously. "No matter how much you want her to be. _No one_ survives piloting alone. Not for any length of time."

"But you --"

"I can't die. Well, I can." Jack's grin is fierce. Feral, almost. "But I come back. Every time. Over and over again. Whether I want to or not."

"I saw her in the Drift!" Ianto bursts out.

It's torn from him, he's not even sure why; it's not that he _wants_ to confront Jack's pain with his own. But there's a tidal wave of emotion pent up in him. And Jack's blithe assertion that Lisa is dead, that Ianto is _wrong_ \-- the snapping of the final straw in the fragile wall of conviction that he's built around himself -- it's what brings it all crashing down.

He's prepared for anger. Instead, the raw pain and hurt begins to fade from Jack's face, replaced by curiosity. 

"You haven't even been _in_ the Drift," Jack says. "At least, you haven't been in a Jaeger cockpit since you've been here in Cardiff. Or have you?"

Ianto shakes his head. "I haven't. I know. It's bleeding through into my dreams. And ... my waking life, sometimes."

"How long?" Jack asks softly. Not _It's not possible._ Just that quiet, casual question.

"Since Greenland. You asked me why I'm so sure she's alive. That's why." Ianto smiles, just a little. He's had plenty of practice at putting on a mask, and this smile isn't even all for show. "She says she wants to meet you. Says you're good looking."

Jack actually looks shaken now. Ianto has managed to kick him out from behind his masks, at least a little. "What's she look like?" Jack asks.

"Uh ... very beautiful," Ianto says, startled. "Afro-British. Short hair. She, uh ... she liked silver jewelry, and -- why does it even matter?"

Jack seizes his wrist. Ianto is too surprised to resist as Jack tugs him into something between a fast trot and a run.

"Because," Jack says, " _I've seen her too."_

***

Ianto doesn't realize, until they get there, that Jack's headed for the simulation suites. There's almost no one here right now, no pilots, just a skeleton crew. Jack shoves a startled tech out of the way and starts throwing switches on a pod.

"Wait -- what are you doing?"

"What's it look like?" Jack turns to the tech. "Out, out, man."

"Wait. You want us to Drift together?"

"I want us to at least try. I need to meet this Lisa of yours. Properly, I mean, not ... glimpses."

"You've seen her," Ianto breathes. "You really have."

"I don't _know_ what I've been seeing." Jack sounds frustrated, a man confronted by an impossibility even greater than his own existence. "So let's get in the pod and have a look, why don't we."

"But -- what if we're not --"

"Drift compatible? So nothing will happen," Jack says shortly. He turns away from setting the controls, and Ianto can't help noticing how sure Jack's hands are. He knows exactly which buttons to push, which is interesting, isn't it, since to the best of Ianto's knowledge, Jack isn't and never has been one of the techs ....

"Who _are_ you?" Ianto asks.

And Jack smiles, just a little. There's an edge to it. "You're about to find out, aren't you?"

Ianto is poised on the verge of speaking, when there is a sudden eruption of noise. The alert siren. And a calm voice begins speaking over the PA: _Backup pilots, prepare to suit up. Backup pilots --_

Jack and Ianto stare at each other for a long moment. And then, with no words needed, they're out the door and headed for the Drivesuit level.

Jack doesn't tell him to stay behind.

***

The Drivesuit level is in emergency mode when they get there. There are people everywhere, pilots and backup-backup pilots and techs and medical staff. Ianto's stomach goes cold.

He wanted an opening to get back in the cockpit, once. But he doesn't want it to be anyone he knows. Not Owen and Tosh. Not Gwen and Suzie. Not any of them.

"What's happening?" Jack calls to Gwen and Suzie as the techs begin to slap the Drivesuit onto him.

"London Hurricane went off the grid," Gwen calls back. "We don't know why. It was supposed to be just a single small kaiju, but it's in the main Rift corridor."

She doesn't have to say more. Anything can come through, and around the big Rifts it's more likely than elsewhere. It wouldn't be the first time a seemingly simple callout turned deadly. 

_Not Owen and Tosh. Not them. Not any of them._

Ianto lunges forward. He catches at Jack's half-mounted Drivesuit, at Jack's arm. "Let me come."

Jack shakes him off.

"Listen!" Ianto hisses at him, leaning close enough to speak with less chance of being heard by the techs around them, as if they're Drifting already. "You were prepared to try Drifting with me downstairs. Do you _want_ to die out there? Again?"

Jack moves to push him away, but with less conviction. Gwen and Suzie are no longer present to witness the fight; they're already suited up and in Gauntlet Fury's cockpit.

"What if you could do it without dying this time? How much use _are_ you like that? Last time, Owen and Tosh had to drag you in. I was there; I saw it. This time, they're the ones with their lives at stake. And, Jack -- _they_ don't come back when they die."

Jack stares at him, sharp blue eyes beneath the cap of the neural interface. And then he turns, and speaks to the techs.

"Suit him up," he says. "We're going in together."

***

It's been months, and an entire lifetime, since Ianto felt the cold grip of the Drivesuit closing over him. There is a moment of pure, utter panic as the suit seals around him. The cold burst of water closing over him -- the conviction that he's going to die out there this time, like he almost died the last time, like everyone he knew or loved died in the fall of the Greenland Shatterdome --

And then he feels the light press of Lisa's hand on his shoulder, her voice whispering in his ear. _It's all right, love. You can do this._

That's right. He _can_ do this. He looks across to Jack, and sees Jack already suited up, but waiting, not going in yet. Waiting for him, like partners do.

The helmet closes over his head.

Jack steps forward. Ianto does too. Into the cockpit.

It's muscle memory now. He knows how to do this; he practiced a lifetime for it. The grapples take hold.

"Still time to back out," Jack says over the suit-to-suit intercom. "We've never tried a test run on this. If it doesn't work --"

"If it doesn't work," Ianto says through that private link, "then lock me out, and do it yourself like you normally do. I'll cope."

Over the intercom, the control room: "Harkness, you've got a partner in there. Confirm, are you intending to initiate neural handshake? Please confirm."

Jack looks at Ianto for a long moment, his gaze steady through the helmet, and he says, "Confirm."

"Blade Sonic, confirmed. Neural handshake will initiate when you've linked up with the main body of your Jaeger. Dropping now."

It's all so familiar to Ianto, the jerk at the clamps, the jolt in his stomach. Lisa should be here, and he's still alone in his head, but not entirely alone, because Lisa is here, as she has been the entire time.

"Jack," he says, through the private radio link. "I don't know what's going to happen when we initiate the neural handshake."

"Me neither," Jack says, a quiet laugh underneath.

"No, I mean -- Lisa's here, she's been here all along." His words tumble out; they're hooking up with the Jaeger's body now, rushing with trainwreck certainty toward the pilot link. "It might not just be you and me in that Drift link, Jack."

"Well," Jack says, with astonishing calm for a man coming up on a Drift connection with someone he's never even tried to Drift with before, "it's never been just us in that bed, either, has it?"

And Ianto has no answer for that. None at all.

"Neural handshake is ready to initiate." The calm voice of Control over the radio. "Please confirm."

Jack looks at Ianto, who swallows, and then says, with his eyes on Jack, "Confirmed."

"Confirmed," Jack says.

And, for the first time since the Greenland Shatterdome fell and broke Ianto's entire world apart, he topples into the Drift.

***

He knows, first of all, who and what Jack is.

There is a future. but not much of one.

There is a shattered, broken world. 

There is a man, a man who can't die, because of something else entirely -- _memories, dazzling and endless, a blue box, a whole cosmos spreading out_ \-- a man who can't die, who goes back in time to change this world. To fix this world.

 _You,_ Ianto's lips shape the word soundlessly. Jack is all throughout the early Jaeger program. Jack is everywhere.

Jack is dying, over and over again, gasping out his last breath through blood choking his mouth and nose ...

 _Breathe, Ianto._ And this is Lisa's voice, speaking into his ear. _Breathe. It's not you, it's him._

Water, flooding a broken cockpit --

_It's not you. It's not him. It's not now._

"Are you Lisa?" Jack asks. His voice is shaky, but it's there, something to hang onto. 

Ianto's eyes open. There is the cockpit, the tangible evidence of his surroundings. And yet, Lisa is still there. He's aware of her. He can almost see her.

 _I am._ There is a bright spark of her sense of humor, her clever mind and warmth. _Hello, Jack Harkness._

"Hello, Lisa Hallett."

Their Jaeger takes a step out into the bay, and the cold lashing waters of the nighttime Atlantic close around them. Far ahead, the lights of Gauntlet Fury flare through the dark, giving them a beacon to follow.

***

The awareness of Lisa fades as they stride through the water, but she is still somehow there. Ianto can feel her love wrapping around him, a warm cradle, holding him up and supporting him. He can feel Jack's fascination and bemusement and wonder.

"She really is out there," Jack says.

"You doubted me?" Ianto can't help saying.

"Constantly and often." But there's a warm undercurrent through the neural connection that says _Not really, not so much, not at all._

And Ianto knows that Jack must be feeling his own complex mix of emotions, his fear and worry, his anxious nervousness.

"You're doing fine," Jack says.

"How about you?" The memory of all those deaths is still with him. How Jack could keep stepping back into the cockpit, knowing _that_ was waiting for him, is beyond Ianto to fathom. "How are you doing?"

"Oh, you know, you do what you need to do." A flash of memory in the Drift: that shattered future, the one Jack is trying to prevent.

There are no secrets here. No masks. No hiding. Not anymore.

"Hey, Jack --" Gwen begins over the radio, and there is a startled pause. "Oh. Hello, _boys._ Jack, is that Ianto in there with you?"

"Hi, Gwen," Ianto says.

"Uh, yeah, hi." She still sounds surprised. "I ... think we need to talk later, but right now, Suzie and I have eyes on London Hurricane."

"Damaged?" Jack asks.

"Badly. No idea about the pilots yet, and -- _Look out!"_

And with that, the battle is joined. It's a new kind of kaiju slicing through the water, shark-quick and knife-sharp. Jack and Ianto turn as one, and the hand-swords of Blade Sonic slice the new enemy apart.

"Blade Sonic." Gwen on the radio, all business now. "Suzie and I are ahead of you, so we'll run interference and draw them off, yeah? Looks like a whole pack. You see if there are survivors."

"On it, Gauntlet Fury," Jack says calmly, and Ianto throws all his attention into the now-unfamiliar muscle movements. He's practiced for months, but it's different in his makeshift practice arena underneath the Shatterdome, as opposed to the actual cockpit.

London Hurricane is a sparking, frozen island in a thrashing gray sea. As they draw closer, Ianto sees movement on the frozen Jaeger -- and then, as they get closer yet, he's shocked to near-stillness by the realization of what he's looking at. That's Tosh, suited up and clinging to the Jaeger's head and grimly welding something as sparks cascade around her and the fins of monsters as large as her Jaeger tower above her in the flares of lightning from the storm around them.

"Their communications are completely down," Jack says. "Just a sec, got an idea for getting their attention."

He brings up Blade Sonic's helmet lights to full power. The lights rake across the Jaeger, and Tosh, and abruptly illuminate the ocean of monsters around her. She looks around, and raises a light. Flashes it, quickly, blinking on and off.

"SOS. Thank you, Tosh, hadn't figured that one out," Jack murmurs. "Ianto, you know Morse Code?"

"Well, even if I didn't, I do now, since you do." He's rusty at it; Jack is fresher, and with that backup, Ianto flashes back, OWEN?

Tosh is astonishing fast with her handheld flashlight, blinking it at them through the lashing rain and waves. HURT. SUIT FROZEN.

Blade Sonic strides up alongside the stricken Jaeger. "We're going to have to transfer them over here, I think," Jack says through the Drift, and -- oh, Ianto had almost forgotten what this was like -- a plan is hatched and formed and decided upon in split seconds.

Jack is more experienced at piloting alone. Ianto pulls out of the clamps, manually disengaging -- and there's the sudden cold shock as the neural interface goes down. There's still a certain level of awareness of Jack, more so than usual, but at this point, trying to move in sync would only screw them both up.

With the now-heavy Driftsuit dragging at his limbs, Ianto clambers up the ladder to the emergency hatch and swings it open. Rain lashes over his suit. He leans out, looking down at Tosh below, and raises his face shield -- rain and salt spray sting his face -- to shout down to her, "Ready for a rescue?"

"Oh, you can't even imagine," Tosh shouts back. "Can you help me? I can't --" Her voice is lost in the storm, but he catches, "-- do alone --"

The last thing he wants to do is leave the relative shelter of Blade Sonic's hatch, but he does it anyway. The Drivesuit can magnetize its palms and feet, so he uses that -- as Tosh apparently is, too -- and clings to the surface of Blade Sonic, then leaps over to London Hurricane's frozen bulk.

"What are you doing here?" Tosh asks, putting an arm around him. This is the first time Ianto realizes that she's got a broken arm; it dangles uselessly at her side. She's out here welding the damaged suit with _one arm,_ clinging on with only her feet.

"Rescuing you, of course," he says, and she gives a little huff. "Where's the way down?" The Mark-5's are different and he's not used to them.

"Here." She leads the way with carefully deliberate steps. Ianto follows and looks down the hatch to see her doing a sort of fast magnetic rappelling from rung to rung, or maybe more like suit parkour. Damn.

He follows her down, and drops out into the cockpit. Things are bad down here. The forward viewport has been shattered, and rain lashes what's left of London Hurricane's controls and suit grapples.

"Ianto?" Jack says over the radio.

"Hang on, just hold your position."

"More nasties coming out of the Rift, Ianto."

Great. Just what they need.

He makes his way through debris and saltwater puddles to Tosh trying to get Owen on his feet. "There was a lot of neural feedback when they hit us," she says to Ianto, "and he took the brunt of it -- this absolute jerk has rewired the medical hardware in our cockpit so he can not only get input from the other Jaegers but also reroute ours at the drop of a hat, so he took the shot and I didn't. And I am very put out about it!" she added, giving Owen a shake.

"Ow," Owen said vaguely, through the helmet.

"Oh, are you awake? Does it hurt? Good. Owen," she adds, "Jack and Ianto are here to help us. And Gwen and Suzie are out there too, I think."

"They are," Ianto confirms. He gets one of Owen's arms over his shoulder, and remembers that Tosh has only one working arm. "Tosh, I don't know how we're going to get him up the ladder."

"We're not leaving him!" Tosh snaps.

"I wasn't suggesting ...."

 _Jump,_ Lisa says in the back of his head, and Ianto looks ahead to the gaping hole in the forward helmet-bubble of the Jaeger's face, with the sea surging beyond. At the same time, Jack says into the suit radio, "We'll catch you. Go."

Lisa is both here and there, speaking to him and Jack, and he's not sure how to feel about that. He can't hear Jack anymore, not properly. But Lisa can hear both of them.

It is what it is. He takes a breath.

"Trust us?" he asks Tosh.

"Of course," she says, not yet realizing what she's trusting to.

"Good," Ianto says, and nods at the hole in the viewport, the rain-lashed darkness beyond.

"Oh, bloody _hell,"_ Tosh murmurs.

They each snug one of Owen's suit-clad arms over their shoulders. Ianto is dimly aware of Owen muttering something profane and Tosh telling him to shut up, but mostly he's focused on the goal, that rainstruck hole in the world, and Lisa's calm voice in the back of his head guiding him in.

"Ready?" he murmurs to Tosh, and she gives a half-hysterical laugh. Dragging Owen's deadweight, they go: through the cockpit, to the edge. There's a drop of probably fifty feet below them, and an enormous fin surfaces briefly and then goes below the water.

Owen rouses enough to say, "If we die here, Ianto, know that I will go to my grave with one question on my lips: What the fuck are you _doing_ here?"

"Owen, shut up," Tosh says. "Ianto, you say when."

Ianto pauses, and in that moment of stillness, Lisa's not-a-voice speaks calmly in the back of his mind: "Go."

He steps forward, and Tosh does too, without being told. It's like a strange sort of five-way Drift, just for an instant, and then Blade Sonic's cupped and rain-washed hands catch them.

***

The three of them tumble down the ladder into Blade Sonic's relatively dry and warm cockpit. Ianto lets go of Tosh and Owen, already starting for the drive cradle. "Sorry, sorry -- I have to --" He can feel the strain in Jack already, the amount of pain Jack is in just from piloting the Jaeger alone for such a short amount of time. And he's been going out _alone_ for all this time, doing this alone --

"Yes, yes, we understand," Tosh says absently. She is peeling off Owen's helmet; his head lolls back against her chest. "You are a complete idiot, Owen Harper."

Ianto steps back into the grapples. There is no waiting, this time, for the neural handshake. It snaps into place immediately, a sharp shock of painful-familiar recognition. Jack's thoughts wash through his, already familiar and comfortable.

"You know what, Ianto Jones," Jack says into his head, as the Jaeger moves out, the arm-blade coming forward to slice through the huge thing that just emerged from the waves. "I think we're more than usually Drift-compatible."

"You think?" Ianto says, and somewhere in the back of his head, Lisa is laughing.

***

They stumble into the Cardiff Shatterdome in a daze of exhausted triumph. The latest incursion is repelled, with bits of kaiju scattered across the mid-Atlantic waters; Gwen and Suzie are coming in behind them, and in Blade Sonic's cockpit, Tosh is sitting against the bulkhead with Owen in her lap.

The external grapples lock on, and Blade Sonic is dragged into position. Ianto sags wearily into the suit, as inertia kicks in and the cockpit is boosted up to the Drivesuit level. The doors open and medical staff flood the cockpit and he's stumbling out, with Jack catching his arm.

"So how's it feel to come back in and actually remember it?" Ianto asks, stripping off the sweat-soaked helmet.

Jack grins at him, peeling off his own helmet. He looks exhausted and sweaty and very -- _human_ , not like the glossy surface-only look of Jack in the canteen on his morning-afters. "Better than I thought it would," he says, and it's a moment of honesty that leaves Ianto stripped to the skin.

***

And there's aftermath, and there are debriefings, and there's trying to explain how he ended up going out in a Jaeger when he's officially just cafeteria staff, and there's trying to explain about the Greenland Shatterdome and how he was a pilot there, when Tosh and Gwen show up to yell at the Shatterdome brass while Suzie tries to drag them out ....

And there's collapsing into Jack's bed, after, with Jack's warm weight against him, so tired he hardly even remembers a person could be this tired, and yet, it's the kind of physical exhaustion that tends to come before a truly relaxing sleep ...

He falls asleep with his face tucked into Jack's neck.

And he wakes in a Jaeger's cockpit. It's his old one, the Jaeger he used to pilot with Lisa. This time, he's sitting in the comfortable, couchlike pilot cradle next to Lisa's.

"You always impress me," Lisa says, smiling at him.

"You too, love." This time, it's easier to look at the silver cables that snake in and out of her. He thinks he might be starting to get used to it. "Thank you for the help."

"I like your beau," she says, with that sly, sweet smile.

"He's not my -- okay, maybe he _is_ my -- are you just here to mock me?"

"That and many other things." She reaches out a hand. He braces for the dream to shatter into a painful awakening, but instead her hand closes over his, warm and strong. "I'm glad you've found love, Ianto."

"I'm ..." But he can't say he doesn't love Jack, not after today. 

After today, he's found love in a lot of unexpected corners of his life: on top of a Jaeger with rain lashing at him, and preparing to take a run at a drop into the unknown, and knowing that someone else, out there in the rain, had his back against a far bigger and more terrifying enemy.

"Oh, my love," Lisa says, her hand tightening over his, "I'm _so_ glad."

"I'll find you," he tells her.

"I know," she says. "But you won't do it alone."

He sinks into the dark, and the last thing he feels is her hand on his. He sleeps a long and refreshing sleep, and wakes wrapped in Jack's arms.

***

There's a gathering in the pilot's lounge.

The power surge that Owen rerouted to his own suit, away from Tosh's, gave him something akin to a minor heart attack, and one hell of a migraine. There's not a lot the infirmary can do at this point, and recovering in his quarters would probably have made a lot more sense; instead, he's staked out a sofa in the corner of the pilot's lounge, half-napping, and the rest of them have congregated around to play cards and generally hang out. 

Including Ianto, who normally would be here to deliver coffee. This time, Suzie and Tosh have dealt him into their poker game, and Gwen has been down to the canteen and returned with biscuits and muffins.

"You are such a ringer," Suzie says in exasperation, as Ianto pulls in the pot for a third straight hand.

"I just have a good poker face."

"You people are too sodding loud," Owen says, with an arm thrown over his face.

"Excuse us," Suzie says tartly, gathering in the cards for her deal. "You could go recover somewhere quieter, you know."

Owen grumbles something and rolls to face the wall.

.... Jack is here. Ianto is aware of it before anyone else, and he looks up to see Jack standing just inside the door, leaning against the wall, watching them all with a slight smile.

Drift compatibility. It's more than just being compatible in the suits. It's _knowing_ each other. It's the way Gwen slides a cup of coffee under Suzie's hand as Suzie reaches out for it. It's the way Tosh quietly reaches over with her good hand to scritch her fingers through Owen's hair and rub his temples for his headache without him saying anything about it. It's the way Ianto used to know when Lisa was having a bad day and lay out chocolate and put on a movie that she liked before she even walked in the door.

It's the way Jack walks over quietly and slides into the seat next to him and plants a kiss on his temple. 

Somewhere in the back of his head, Lisa is happy.

And yes, he _will_ find her. He's more sure than ever that she's out here somewhere. He and Jack will find her, and he'll get to introduce her to Jack in person.

But for now, he's got a place, for the first time in a while. He has friends. He has Jack's arm around him. Love surrounds him, wrapping him up, cozy and warm.

"Have you ever thought," Ianto says to Jack, as Suzie deals out the next hand, "of changing the Jaeger's name?"

"What, _our_ Jaeger?" Jack says, and a little happy thrill goes through Ianto at that word: _our._ "Why does it need to change?"

"I was just thinking, the blade, it's not actually sonic --"

"It's _metaphorical."_

"I don't know, it just doesn't have the right flair."

Jack is grinning, looking more relaxed than Ianto has ever seen him. He hooks an ankle over Ianto's.

"So what _does_ have the right flair?" he asks

"I thought maybe ... it's all about saving people, isn't it? We could call it Life Knife."


End file.
